Check Out Footage From Saints Row's Cancelled PSP Game

Volition will be live-streaming some footage from an unreleased, unpolished version of Saints Row: Undercover for the PSP. The game was canceled back when the original THQ was in command of the property after they saw footage of the game in development and felt it just wasn't worth following through with.

Gamespot did a write-up about the reveal of the PSP version of Saints Row, which was actually originally supposed to be a port of Saints Row 2 for Sony's mobile device. However, quality control and the limited hardware didn't do the game any justice and it got canned. You can see the video from Volition explaining how they came upon the game and the PSP devkit that housed the unfinished product.

Basically, the game was outsourced to another studio where they took a stab at the Saints Row property. The game did not manage to contain all the controls and quality gameplay mechanics that were present in Volition's Saints Row 2.

As they bring up in the video, the graphics weren't that hot for the PSP game, either. The lack of functionality combined with the unpolished gameplay and the graphics is supposedly what led THQ to originally abandon the project.

Volition Software now wants to show gamers more of the project and what it was about, as well as how far long it was in development. Based on the brief clips they revealed in the video above, the game appeared to be fairly well into development and seemed to show a measure of polish not unlike many other PSP games out there. Then again, we only see some tiny snippets of gameplay in the video above, and it could be in far worse shape than we know. Of course, we'll find out just what kind of shape it's in exactly when Volition live-streams more of the content on Thursday, January 28th.

Volition used the video above as a way to gauge interest from the community and see if whether or not the community would be interested in peeking behind the scenes at how the magic works from behind the curtain. It's not something we get to see very often from AAA studios, so it's cool that Volition is doing this.

Coming off of successful titles like Red Faction and Saints Row, I think many gamers would love to see what makes a game like this tick and how it came to be. The YouTube comments are also full of people wanting to see Saints Row: Undercover remade for the PlayStation Vita, or at least taken to Kickstarter to finish off development. I don't know how viable crowd-funding the game would be, but I'm definitely interested in seeing what they come up with and showcase during the live-stream next Thursday.

I wouldn't doubt that, with enough fanfare, the live-stream might also play host to some other big announcement from the company. They haven't made any big announcements for the series recently following the Gat out of Hell expansion for Saints Row IV, so maybe the live-stream will also offer gamers an opportunity at what they have in store for the future of the franchise.